slice of life

Note: I warn you ahead of time this post may change the way you feel about me as a potentially normal human being. I’d advise not dwelling on it too much and just chalking it up to “Oh that Will… the lengths he’ll go to about something so trivial — and then write about it!” But if you want to overthink my sanity or lack thereof, that’s OK.

Whilst most of my communication is done via fingertips and a keyboard, my job has me writing violation notices in triplicate on an almost daily basis, and as such I’m always searching for a gooooood ballpoint pen to provide whatever boost to my crappy penmanship. My journey has led me to find two of my favorites. The Staples 1.0 and the Paper Mate Profile 1.4. Both of these instruments are gloriously smooth. In fact the latter claims to be the “World’s Smoothest Pen.” I am unable to refute that trademarked boast, but I don’t agree with it, I think the Staples 1.0 edges it out.

Trouble is the pen containers themselves that encase their ink cartridges are relatively bulky –additionally so with the inclusion of rubber grips — and as a result, carrying the requisite two (“always have a back-up!”) in my uniform shirt pocket while on duty is not an option.

Enter Pen No. 3. The Bic Clic Stic, the very model of compact and slender efficiency, two fit in my pocket like they were custom built for it. See how it and the Staples 1.0 compare, below:

The only problem is the Clic Stic does not write to my satisfaction. Not that it’s bad, it’s perfectly acceptable. But in the environment within which I scribe, i.e., usually while on my feet outdoors holding a ticket book at somewhat of an awkward angle while trying to write information legibly in very small areas on a slightly unstable surface, it’s just does not feel as comfortable as either the Staples or Paper Mate.

With an acceptance of form over function, I made do with the Clic Stic because of its overall design until it dawned on me a few weeks ago, that I might be able to do a simple hack involving the taking of the ink cartridge out of the Staples and/or Paper Mate and swapping it for the one that comes standard with the Clic Stic.

Of course, when that dawning occurred I was down to my last Staples 1.0 and upon removal of the pens’ respective guts I found the Staples ink cartridge was about a quarter-inch longer than the Bic’s. Since an irreversible trim would be in order with no guarantee of success, I wasn’t about to risk sacrificing it without some back-ups on hand.

And that brought me to a local Staples last weekend, where I spent 10 minutes wasting my time scouring their huuuuuge selection of pens only to find that particularly store on that particular day didn’t have a single Staples 1.0 in stock. Much grousing ensued and led to me taking a box of Paper Mates to the register. When the cashier asked me if I’d been able to find everything I wanted, I curtly told her absolutely not. When her bored looked turned to one of mild surprise I insisted she not worry about it because the last thing I wanted to do was waste more time talking about it. After all, a pen’s a pen, right? Wrong.

Next I went to Staples.com and found a box of a dozen of them was only going to cost $5.29 — but get this: the only shipping involved a whoppingly excessive $9.95 charge. Much WTFing ensued until I discovered that Staples offers free delivery to its stores for customer pick-up, so I selected that option and a couple days later after being notified via email that my order was delivered, detoured on my way home to pick it up. I was humorously not surprised to find my box of pens — roughly 5″ x 3″ x 1″– had been shipped in a box that was easily 18″ x 12″ x 4″. Ironically, Staples has apparently never heard of padded envelopes, which they sell.

Long story short, I sat down yesterday with six of the Clic Stics and six of the Staples 1.0s, and about six minutes later, having successfully completed the final pen hack I now had the best of both worlds where form equaled function: a half-dozen fully operational Clic Stics holding their freshly trimmed and installed supersmooth Staples ink cartridges. And there was much rejoicing.

It began a couple months ago when I bought a pair of Danner boots for work, pretty much one of the most popular brands of footwear for those in my profession.

When they arrived I plotted a course to take them to a place south of Downtown called Code 7, my go-to place to get ’em shined up right, since I’m the posterboy for How To Suck At Shining Boots.

Trouble was, I found out that at some point between my academy adventures and the present, that particular branch of Code 7 had closed down (in fact their website still lists the LA location), leaving their only one other store waaaay down in Long Beach.

So I employed the inturnet to find me a suitable local replacement, which lead me to Willie’s on La Brea south of Olympic. The place looks amazing; spacious and chock full of old-school equipment to make or repair any manner of footwear, I dropped off my boots for their standard $12 shine but was intrigued by the proprietor’s pitch for his Cadillac service. Costing $42 it amounted to the boots being left for a week wherein they receive six coats and polishes resulting in basically a pair of leather mirrors on your feet.

I picked up the $12-shined shoes a couple days later and was satisfied with how they looked. Not Code-7 dazzled, but they’d do. The proprietor even blamed it on the boots, noting that the Danners I’d bought were made in Taiwan (what’s up with that Danner?) with a leather not of the same quality as those made in the USA. That fact of course gave him the opportunity to re-pitch me to fork over the green for the Cadillac treatment. He said it would take that type of work to really make them truly glow. So the seed that had been planted got fertilized. I was simultaneously intrigued by the concept of spending almost half of a hundred dollars on a shine as I was repulsed by it.

But the intrigued side of me won out and a few weeks ago when the $12 shine had looong worn away, I dropped the boots off with the promise that a week later I’d be in total freaking awe.

A week later, I wasn’t in total freaking awe. Certainly they looked all right, but really not much better than the $12 shine. Coincidentally (or conveniently) the proprietor was not on-hand, so it was a surprised shop employee who had to endure my brief line of rhetorical questioning, which consisted of “I paid $42 for this?” as I stormed out.

Let it be known that the irony is not lost on me that for the $42 I threw away, I could’ve driven them down to Code 7 in Long Beach with that amount of money in my pocket, waited for them, bought lunch, tipped the server, paid for the shine, tipped the shiner, driven them home and still had about $10 left.

To make matters worse whoever did the quarter-assed job at Willie’s applied polish to e-v-e-r-y leather aspect of the eight-inch uppers of the boot — a complete waste of time, material and effort since those parts of the boots reside unseen under the pant legs. The only thing that work accomplished was to piss me off further because it meant that pulling the boots on or taking them off left black waxy residue on my fingers. The only thing I hate more than a crappy ridiculously expensive shine is to have to scrub off proof of its complete over-priced failure from my digits twice a day.

Now you’d think I’d’ve been steamed enough to march them back to Willie’s, fling them in the proximity of the proprietor’s head and either demanded a refund or at least a make-good, but instead after wearing them on-duty just one day I was so ashamed at being such a total sucker that I chocked it up to being an expensive lesson learned and instead dumped them into the bottom of my locker and went back to wearing my old trusty boots. Once out of sight and mind the Danners sat until yesterday at end of shift when I hauled ’em home and this morning deployed my meager skillset in stripping them and starting from scratch.

Suffice it to say that at the end of that ordeal, they still need a boatload more of elbow grease, but at least my Chrysler-level work (seen at the top of this post) looks far better than Willie’s so-called Cadillac.

Probably. And not that I would ever give even the most meticulously clean off-ramp panhandler money (though I have been known to hand out snacks or water to them on occasion). But still, even though I unbendingly consider them all low-grade con artists, I’d probably have a scosh more respect for them if they’d at least police the litter around their base of operations.

In the 12-plus years I’ve been a-blogging, I don’t think I’ve ever gone more than a week or two without posting SOMETHING. So you can imagine my shock when I saw I’d last been seen here basically more than three weeks ago.

The funny thing is, I’ve still been communicating, but mostly on Facebook, which for reasons known only to Mark Zuckerberg has been able to squirrel its way in to becoming something of my defacto mode of e-communication. I don’t even tweet much anymore.

But enough about that. Without any further preambling, here’s some of the stuff I’ve been doing of late:

1) Kayaking The Los Angeles River

As part of a pilot program this summer, a section of the long-lost Los Angeles River coursing through Elysian Valley was reopened to the public for use as a recreational resource, an opportunity angelenos have not had since the 1930s when the river’s channelization was begun to prevent flooding.

As a boy I accidentally discovered the river, and from that single experience I have never stopped being enamored with and zealously protective of what so many others have dismissed as our city’s woeful waterway — little more than a drainage ditch to the sea. Though I’ve been aware of its potential, I never imagined that one day I’d see such a sea change in perception so that the river would made accessible and embraced not as a prohibited place but as public parkland to be explored and experienced and as something to connect with after so long a disconnect.

So for me, thanks to L.A. River Expeditions (Facebook), to be among the first wave during this historic first season and doing what you see in these clips at the top and after the jump: putting a kayak into its waters and putting my butt into that kayak and paddling — however awkwardly — downstream for a water-level perspective of my beloved river, it’s not a dream come true. Because I never dared to dream this could ever happen. Not in my lifetime.

No, it’s much more than that. To me it’s nothing short of a glorious miracle. And for that I’m thankful to everyone who has fought so tirelessly and valiantly over the years to get the city’s much-maligned and misbegotten river recreated in enough influential minds so that it can now be leisurely recreated upon.

Physically and soulfully these waters were very moving.

2) Unrocking The parkway in front of our house

I can’t remember if it was four or five years ago, but it all began when our next door neighbor contacted me to tell me he was redoing the section of parkway in front of his house with river rocks, and would I be interested in going in for half of the cost and doing mine as well to give the two parkways some continuity.

I figured why not. It would look better than the dirt and dead grass that had been there and it would be an opportunity to do something positive with the guy with whom, frankly, I’m not on the best of terms.

So a few weeks later he shows up with a metric ton of the palm-sized rocks and we pour them out, and the continuity lasted for all of as long as it took for the grasses and weeds to grow from between our rocks. See, he keeps his section of the parkway completely sterile, using gardeners he’s instructed to pluck pretty much even the slightest growth of green. Me? I’m my own gardener and I instructed myself not to give a hoot about what grows.

The only thing I’d been meticulous about is putting the rocks back that people for some stupid reason can’t resist kicking or tossing all over the place: the gutter, the street, the sidewalk, our front steps. And yes, I’ve even confronted people I’ve witnessed taking the rocks – literally picking up several and walking off as if there’s a “Free Rocks — All You Can Carry!” sign posted.

Fast forward to this week, and I’m finally done with these rocks. Agreeing to partner this design option for our parkways did nothing to improve things with the neighbor, and so I decided that it’s time to reclaim or refresh our decidedly seedy section of the parkway and remove the river rocks.

I started yesterday (August 12), and quickly discovered that it was something easier said than done. What I thought would take a couple hours of clearing the roughly 40′ x 4′ area, is going to take about eight or more… mostly because over the ensuing rainy seasons, what started as one layer of rocks on the surface of the soil is now in places two or three layers of rocks that have been buried by the flow of water and soil, hastened by those people who’ve tromped on them and pushed them deeper. It’s really quite remarkable how low some of these rocks have gone.

I found out during the first four/five foot long section I cleared from the driveway apron to the magnolia tree, which also involved digging up all the dead patches of grass. And there are a LOT of dead patches of grass.

Soooo, what you’re seeing here in this timelapse is roughly 45 minutes of me attacking with little more than a spade and begloved hands the second four/five foot section between the magnolia tree and the brick walkway. Ended up filling the bucket three times. That’s a lotta rocks. And I’ll do it again tomorrow. And the day after. Until it’s done.

Not sure yet what I plan to do once it’s all cleared. I may just leave it bare. I may plant something. Or I may supersaturate the soil and set the rocks back into the wet dirt side by side like so many tiles. At least that way if some idiot wants to take one or toss one it’ll require a little more effort than just bending over and getting grabby.

Forty-six seconds of Pumpkin enjoying breakfast specifically and life in general, this clip documents what has to be a serious contender for the title of Happiest Most Satisfied Sound Ever, and I’m lucky in that I get to hear it every morning.

I sat down on Friday to enjoy a persimmon and a guava, and brought my trusty little lockback pocket knife with which to slice them. The persimmon and the guava were part of a bag of backyard goodness my friend and neighbor David brought over. The knife, pictured below previously belonged to our tenant Joe, and was discovered in a fishing tackle box of his that I found in the basement a year or two after he died in 2008. I’ve kept it nearby ever since. It’s a great little knife.

I didn’t realize it’s above-average attributes until I brought it with me one recent Saturday to the Rio Hondo College and as I was sitting at a table with others in my class and using it to slice up an apple, a fellow student picked it up and commented on it. He read the “Japan” stamped near the base of the less-than-two-inch-long blade, and was impressed, remarking that this must be a vintage knife as it’s rare nowadays that such a small blade would be made with Japanese steel. Stamped above the “Japan” is “440 C Stainless,” which I later came to learn is the highest quality 440 stainless steel.

It made me appreciate the knife even more.

Back to the persimmon and the guava on Friday. Turns out I didn’t even need the knife because the persimmon was so ripe you could eat it like an apple or tomato — the guava the same way. I followed those up with a store-bought grapefruit and again the little knife wasn’t used because it was too small to quarter up the fruit’s large diameter.

Afterwards, I took the paper plate upon which the inedible fruit bits sat and I scraped them off into the nonrecyclable trash bin before putting the plate in the recyclable bin. Unknown to me then was that I’d placed the knife on the plate and piled the rinds and stuff atop it and scraped it into the trash, too.

It was about 24 hours later, when I decided to have another persimmon and guava and grapefruit that I realized the knife was missing. It was not in its usual place by my desk. It was not on the table by my chair in the livingroom, and I went into the usual dark funk whenever something of mine is not where it’s supposed to be. Of course, I also was quick to say what my mom has always called The Magic Prayer: “Nothing is lost. It is simply not revealed,” but my heart wasn’t in it. Logically, I checked under and around my desk and my livingroom chair, Illogically I checked places the knife would never be: upstairs, outside in the backyard. Finally it dawned on me it might be in the trash, so Saturday afternoon, I did some searching of the containers in the kitchen and the cans on the side of the house. Still, no knife.

So I groused and I fumed and I frowned and I nashed and I looked again in all the logical places I’d looked before, and again in the illogical places, too. Then this morning I wrote the following on my Facebook page:

With apologies to WH Auden, stop all the clocks and shut off the phone… this is me obsessing: My absolute favorite pocket knife has maddeningly gone missing and its disappearance happened at some point after using it to slice some fruit either yesterday or the day before (I’m not sure which). Compounding my frustration is that the fruit was either ripe enough not to need slicing (persimmon and guava) or too big for the pocket knife’s short blade to be effective (grapefruit). Having searched in all the places it might be (as well as many places it absolutely wouldn’t), I then did a cursory and unsuccessful search of the discarded garbage, my fear being I accidentally pitched it with some other trash. But I’m afraid I’m going to have to don some makeshift biohazard gear and dive in deep to the budding repulsive compost-in-training for a more complete examination that leaves nary a broken eggshell, turkey bone, coffee ground, nor grapefruit rind unturned. Few things frustrate and fixate me more than a cherished thing that’s just up and vanished, so like I said, silence all the pianos and stop the dog from barking… this is me obsessing.

After getting back from a wonderful 3.5-mile hike in Griffith Park with Susan and Ranger, I finally rolled up my sleeves and plugged up my nose and this afternoon dove determinedly into the outdoor cans. Damn the stench and the stickiness and the sog and the yuck and the muck I was going to go piece by piece until I found it, or threw up trying.

And I did. No, I didn’t upchuck. I found it. When I lifted the three-day-old remains of our Thanksgiving turkey, there it was sitting in a damp and dank bed of coffee grounds.

And I wrote this on Facebook and posted the above photo:

Start the clocks back up and turn on the phones… This is me no longer obsessing over my gone-missing absolute favorite American Valor 440 Stainless Japan steel pocket knife, pictured here after it was recovered from the trash into which I so unknowingly and ignominiously discarded it. And no I did not literally cry for joy when I found it under the turkey carcass and covered in coffee grounds. I just smiled in relief.

May I present to you 35 seconds of our calico cat Patches being… Patches. There is a perfectly and freshly filled bowl of water not 12 feet away, but after I finished the breakfast dishes and accidentally left the water trickling from the kitchen faucet, Patchy opted to hop on up into the wet sink and slake her unquenchable thirst with absolutely no regard and/or problem with the fact that in order for the water to get into her mouth she had to let it course down the side of her head.